Trump’s Iran brinkmanship reaches truce, escalates backlash at home

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/04/08/trump-iran-threats-deal/

The president’s ultimatum drew condemnation across the political spectrum and intensified open debate about his credibility, morality and sanity.

“The President’s threat that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ cannot be excused away as an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations with Iran,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a statement on Tuesday. “This type of rhetoric is an affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold and promote around the world for nearly 250 years. It undermines our long-standing role as a global beacon of freedom and directly endangers Americans both abroad and at home.”

Iran’s government also portrayed the deal as a victory and is demanding a role in supervising passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which it did not have before the war.

“There is no military solution to the conflict right now,” Joe Kent, Trump’s counterterrorism adviser who resigned last month in protest of the war, said in an online video after the president’s announcement Tuesday night. “Every action that we’ve taken militarily has only strengthened the regime, and it’s done a lot to destabilize the entire region.”

Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) called Trump’s threat “evil and madness.” Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who maintains a large following online, accused Trump of desecrating Sunday’s Easter holiday with a profane social media post and of being willing to commit “a moral crime.”